How LBRY Works: Supports & Tips

Tips and supports are core features of LBRY that let you reward creators you like. They work the same way, with one key difference.

Claims 101

Let's start with a quick refresher on how claims work.

When you publish to LBRY, you add a claim to the blockchain that connects your content to a human-readable name. The more credits you stake on that claim, the stronger that claim is associated with the name. If you stake more than anyone else for that name, your content is "controlling" the name, and will be shown when anyone visits that name.

For example, the name markdown has 28 claims on it (you can see them by running lbrycrd-cli getclaimsforname markdown). The top claim is b04359abf8869bf15f40cb68a682c4cd985037df and has 1234 LBC staked. This was the fourth claim made on the name markdown ("sequence": 3), but it has the most staked ("bid": 0), so that's what you see when you go to lbry://markdown.

What Is A Support?

The LBRY spec says that a support "lends its amount to bolster an existing claim." The goal is to let anyone, not just the claim's creator, stake LBC on a claim. When you support a claim, you signal to others that this claim is high-quality, help it rank higher for its name, and boost it in lists of trending content.

Back to our example, the top claim for markdown has 7 supports on it (see the supports array in the output of getclaimsforname), adding a total of 14.5 LBC extra to the claim. This brings the claim's effective amount to 1248.5 LBC. If someone else make a new claim for the original 1234 LBC, that claim would be in second place for the name markdown.

At the blockchain level, a support is a transaction that uses the OP_SUPPORT_CLAIM opcode and has a bit of extra data (the claim that you're supporting).

In the app, it looks like this:

Tips vs Supports

When you stake LBC on another creator's claim, you remain in control of the stake. You can choose to unstake the LBC at any time (for example, to send the LBC to a friend or to buy a new lens for your DSLR). The blockchain transaction you create sends your staked LBC to an address in your own wallet.

If you want to back a creator financially, you can make a support that also sends the staked LBC to the address of the content you're supporting. We call this a tip. Tips are micropayments to creators that encourage them to keep posting great content, while also boosting the discovery of their existing content.

Tipping = Better Content

When you send someone else a tip, you're helping fund their work. You're also sending a credible signal that you like what someone is doing. By aggregating this signal across the whole LBRY network, we're building a new way of recommending content that you'll like.

Last week we took another big step in this direction by adding the ability to connect your with your LBRY channel. Check this thread for the details on the master plan.